on the northern side, and comparable on the southern side, about at its height, the cavalry arm was about 10% of the force. so, the limiting factor there was primarily the cost. regiments were formed into brigades. brigades were combined into divisions and on the northern side the divisions were combined into core. never really formed core level organizations. jeff stewart was the senior southern cavalry leader in the east, commanded the cavalry divisions of the army of northern virginia. his opponent was the cavalry corps of the army of the potomac.

although it wasn't quite three times the size of stewart's division, the north or it is a numerical superiority in terms -- the north always had a numerical superiority in terms of numbers. the north had the advantage of regiment.gular they squandered by making a decision not to break those regiments up and use them as a trainee nuclear us and the said they kept them together. therefore, the northern regiments were starting from scratch to spite a pool of professional cavalry men that they may have been able to tap into. the training increased over the course of the war. by 1863, it had two years into the war, it had reached the level where the cavalry was

about as trained as it was going to get. periodlry trooper of any basic recruity secret to competence takes about two years. some said that they could train an infantry man in the basic skills he needed to be competent as an infantry soldier in about six weeks. because of the riding and horse related skills come it could take up to two years. riding was not the only skill. horse required training as well and although the american to this levelgot because the war was basically four years long, some tofessionals believe that train a fully confident now to

take as long as four years. so, the training requirements for cavalry are significant. when you factor in that there is a war going on, they don't have the time to do even the two-year trooper training. essentially, most cavalry men went into combat in the civil war untrained, barely trained, or have trained. componente training is a big piece. ieven the senior leadership, most of the -- leadership including the senior leaders are only competently trained. there are very few cavalry experts. so, this affects everything that

the cavalry does through the war. from the base trooper level, the maintenance of the horse, to the employment of cavalry on the battlefield and controlling it once it is put on the battlefield in combat. and you can see i have listed two major impacts. and one is a complex cavalry tactics, tactics that european weres routinely practice essentially beyond the training capacity of most american levels,at the higher but of the lowest level, most and that you get themselves to the battlefield, they were doing pretty good. the other impact is on horses. is asining course challenging as skill as riding a

horse, possibly even more challenging. if you're on a horse and on the ground, you're someone successful. but there is a lot of science that goes into maintaining course in everything from showing to feeding tube grooming and taking care of the horses to ensure that they don't become diseased. maintaining large groups of horses. view multiply that times 10 or 100 because you could have 99% of your guys doing the right things with the horses and one sickllows a source to get and all of a sudden that illness spreads to the entire unit and -- have a unit of six horses of sick courses.

course management is a critical factor, very difficult to train. even more difficult to execute with troopers who barely know what they're doing and officers who know hardly a little bit more. , and this isalking hard for us in the modern world to come because we don't see large number of horses. the most i've seen on a single field is about 250. to think that a cavalry unit on the move, the brigade, you're talking three or 4000 horses. cavalry unittine on the move. the volume of and the density of horses and the amount of supervision to make sure that things like feeding and watering on a daily basis occurs is a huge management task which was one of the biggest challenges of the war. have -- if youwe

take care of the horse, then you have to train the horse. the primary trainer of the horse should be the writer but if the trainer doesn't know how to ride, that it becomes a challenge. to have to train the horse operate on the battlefield with noise, respond to commands in a heard of hundreds of thousands of other horses. fartary riding is more challenging than just going to railroad running. you have guys that have never been on a horse in many cases trying to train a horse that does not know what is going on. you get the idea that these guys are not very good in general. that is pretty accurate. in contrast, european armies of

the time are incredibly well-trained in terms of cavalry tactics. their long standing armies that are kept in peace time soldiers are generally professionals. the officers are extremely professional and they have years to train and they have been doing it for hundreds of years by 1861. abouterican army was 20,000 or so guys, the europeans maintain standing armies of .undreds of thousands their level of expertise is well beyond where the armies in north america are. and they are doing tactically things on the battlefield or they're capable of doing tactically things on the battlefield that are just beyond the horsemanship of either american army during the civil war. they don'tr hand

have the weight of tradition holding them back, that are incredibly effective. but in the area porcelain ship, -- of horsemanship, we are lagging pretty far behind. equipment we have is pretty good. in fact, it is excellent. excellent on the north side. talking about training, the difference between southern and northern cavalry men. most of the recruits coming into the army, or least a large percentage come from small town or urban environments. ridden them have not horses before in fact, there are

regiments where barely anybody has written overs before. if you come from a small town in an urban environment, you are familiar with horses because that is how people got around and you probably know how to groom a horse and drive the carriage or wagon but actually writing a horse and riding the horse well is not a common skill in the small town and urbanized north. that is because there are a lot of rural communities in the states on the it is not but uncommon for a union cavalry regiment to have very few people who can write, and nobody in these new regiments knows how to ride in the military way. , mostly rural, inc.

tensioning recruits from rural communities and in fact to be in the southern cavalry you had to know how to ride before you could join. you had to bring your own horse. if you are in one of the southern states and you don't have a horse to bring, then you're not in the cavalry. you have just been branched into the infantry branch. in the north, all of the horses are provided, so there is no requirement other than you sign on the dotted line summary says that you aren't in the cavalry. that is us aren't in point. -- that is the starting point. in the south, you end up with the body of troopers who are all familiar with their horse because they own it. they brought it from the farm in most cases. they know how to ride. the officer corps in the south, the south has a smaller army but

it has more experienced officers because more than half of the experience cavalry officers go -- resign their commissions and join the confederate army. they have more professional officers and they start out with a body of guys who at least know what side of the horse to get on and which is the front and which is the back. that is not a large exaggeration. about the first year of volunteer cavalry regiments would be funny if it wasn't such a serious business that they were preparing for. an entire regiment of volunteer union cavalry, thousand guys meet a thousand horses and get oferal dozen wagonload's cavalry equipment, bridles,

saddles and stuff. nobody entire group, from the officers to enlisted men had never seen a military saddle or bridle and most of them could not write, and nobody knew how to put courses, writers, and goodman together. put horses, riders, and humans together. found that there was a cavalry rider and the nco showed them how to put on their pack to that they could settle the horse -- saddle the horse. ] they invited president lincoln for the official standing up of the regiment, lincoln showed up and they had about a thousand on thes and horses field.

they knew how to put the saddles and stuff together. progressed in their training, they can all get on the horse. they had never moved together as a regiments of this set, we are just going to leave everybody and line, they will get lined up before the president gets there, we will stand very still. we will review the order, the president will say some words, we will say some words, and we will leave. part of the ceremony was that they needed to draw their sabers and they had never done that on horseback before. rses had never seen or heard this thing. they did for the first time in front of the president and the attire unit disintegrated. direction, run riders with the other. hit the of riders

ground. hundreds of broken collarbones. over.heir money was the president leaves and he is thinking that this is the state of the american cavalry. -- the ceremony was over. cannot pull sabers much less fight a battle. that has to do with a lot of the fact that we talked about. military force midship is different than civilian horsemanship. common as we think today. in the south it was pretty common. ingt got them past the rid part of the training. there were many that were beyond the means of the cavalry on both sides early in the war. the equipment was pretty good. the limit was whatever the trooper brought from home and he

provided his own weapon, his own horse and his own saddle, in the wash, the northern army thely lavishly equipped, standard for military course was about a thousand pounds, you can see the weight. if you had a writer that weighed about 140 pounds, you came in, total writer plus equipment at about 225 pounds or so. that is important because scientifically and physically a carry about one quarter of its weight indefinitely without seriously .amaging the horse the army rule was that a thousand pound horse, 225 pounds

of equipment and rider. you do more than that, you justd the horse to go lame in the course of writing it. -- riding it. without standardize equipment, the south had a hard time doing this. this was the standardize equipment among the union army. of considerkind this to standardize equipment at both sides because by 1863, probably 80, 76% of cavalry standardare using equipment. most in the north are coming from captured northern unit. it gets to where they are

manufacturing ammunition for northern rifles. or guys have northern rifles than any other kind. that is because of the lack of a manufacturing capability in general. infamouss and somewhat everything that a and on man needed campaign was carried on his horse. wagons in the cavalry. not enough to carry troopers equipment. if a trooper wanted it, he had to put it on his horse. this was a discipline problem for the nco's and the officers because they want to keep the weight under 225 pounds total on those horses. one of the leadership's

disciplinary task was to inspect the troopers equipment. the troopers may be comfortable in the field. the leadership wants to keep these load as light as possible. leadership,d volunteer, cavalry leaders, don't really understand kind of that science of leadership or what you wind up with was large numbers, numbers in the hundreds of thousands of horses that are ruined and are ultimately put down or die because the leadership and the soldiers don't know what they are doing. if you don't take care of the horse, the horse dies. it was important that the load is as light as possible. as would be on the font and back

of the saddle. they bring the design back from europe in 1850's. justrmy adopts it in 1859, before the civil war and it remains the standard army saddle from the history of the u.s. cavalry. officially isry disbanded as a branch of the army in 1948. this early model of 1859, if you look at the picture here, you'll see this white spot here. you can see the wooden tree covered with weather. except for this spot, this white spot right here, that is right in the black-and-white photograph. this is famous for causing injuries to soldiers.

this is basically the same type of rawhide that your dogs to bones out of. when the dogs chew on it, what happens to it? it gets really soft. after they let it dry, it splits. that is what happened to this rawhide saddled cover. it would get split and brittle. you can imagine sitting hours a day on this edge of a rawhide bone. it cut right through your britches and right through your skin. after the civil war, they redesigned the saddle and they covered this with leather. allowed, it protected the rawhide, it was waterproofed and that problem went away. during the american civil war, that aspect of the saddle was

famous among cavalry troopers for making the saddle very uncomfortable. they never really uncomfortable -- overcome that uncouple reputation. this is actually a very comfortable saddle. i have written i -- ridden in it for eight hours. it is very comfortable. the weight is on the left side of the saddle. , this is air circulating under the saddle. so, it is actually good design in this respect. this was the one flaw, to have it to have a bad reputation during the war and for literally, people think the saddle is an uncomfortable saddle. that is not exactly true. cavalry equipment,

basically five major weapons made up the arsenal. sabers,, pistols, and the most popular and the most well-known. the south did not use carbines on any large scale because they did not have the capability to manufacture them. troopers brought the weapons from home. the favorite weapon is right here, the shotgun. every southern home has a sought end. a double barrel shotgun, not really suitable for mounted warfare. the sawed-off double-barreled weapon of preferred the seven calvary man. interestingly, i have the lance. preferred weapon of cavalry and remains the preferred weapon through world war i.

the reason it is on the slide is that one regiment, the six pennsylvania regiment armed themselves with lances. lances were not more common because it is an incredibly difficult weapon to learn how to handle. up on horsing themselves by having it stick in the ground and then they stamp their horse with the lance or they stamp their partner with the lance. so, only one union unit was willing to give it a try. fairly successful. but, they were the exception. the favorite weapon of the northern cavalry were the carbine. carbine which is a single shot breech loader. shot, it hasgle about twice or at tree rates the rate of fire as your standard infantry loading musket is because it opened and used up

the cartridge in and you levered it closed and you could operate that fast. the rate of fire for a rifle musket was about three minutes. a single shot can do nine mounts a minute. faster if the guys were well trained. started 1863, we clipping the northern cavalry with the spencer carbine. the spencer carbine is a revolution in warfare because it is not only breech loaded but it is a repeater. it carries a seven round magazine that feeds into the stock and has the spring. a metal cartridge. this pushes a round into the breach, you close it, and you're ready to shoot. you could shoot all seven rounds and 10 seconds. so, the south doesn't have carbines except for as they capture them.

mentor cartridge, the south does not have that manufacturing capability. -- the metal cartridge, the south does not have that manufacturing capability. if they capture them, they cannot use them. the spencer pistol, the colt 44 r.liber will sto you see the 1851 colt navy. these were revolvers, but they were not retalix cartridge revolvers, they were revolvers that had to be loaded before you went into battle. they were difficult to load in combat. they were balls that you had to load in. difficult to load in combat. with the cavalry men did was carry and ask jeff. -- was carry extra.

more common was they carried as many pistols as they could. seven calvary, since they did not have a standard load often carried to pistols. union cavalry had one pistol, can't -- there are cases where you see southern calvary men with pistols in their boots or wherever they could put them because it was impossible to reload it once he got into combat. the north carried the light cavalry saver. in the south, officers carried sabers as a sign of their rank. because of manufacturing capability, generally it was not theandard weapon will stop north, everyone got issued a saver. , sabre is much easier to use than a lance, maybe not use effectively, maybe it was likely to hurt somebody or the horse.

cavalry allhern were issued sabers and they tempted to use them in combat. they call it the light cavalry saber. their only light because the previous was twice the size. ,o, light was a relative term this is an example, northern cavalry men on the left, you can see he has got spencer carbine, he has got a saber, he has got his carving belt, that is how the carbine was carried in combat. this was clipped onto his hip. it is possible to shoot the rifle with the carbine without him clipping it. you're ready to go. you have a seven cavalry man with his sawed-off shotgun. horses i.

in 1861, america has the largest world.of horses in the the confederate cavalry, you owned your own horse. if it was injured or killed in combat, you had 60 days to replace it. they would give the trooper time off to go home. given an incentive because if you did not replace it, you were going into the info tree. infantry.e there is a problem because the start not coming back. as the war goes south, there's is a problem with troopers deserting and so they start to cut back on that ruling and they say that your horse gets injured, you're going straight to the infantry. , itou get another horse means to be mailed to you.

arehe north, horses provided by the army. $119 is the standard cost of a horse. by the end of the war, $190. throughoutout 150 the 19th century. considering the average cost, if i was to go out looking for a 1500trail riding horse, blocks. not that much inflation. to put this into perspective, a calvary privates pay was $13 a month. is almostor his horse a year's pay. the carbine was $25. the pistol was $25. so, in his personal equipment, the army had a lot more invested in him than in his pay.

thewould think that because equivalent was so valuable that they would take really good care of it. unfortunately, that was not the case. becomes too easy to replace. army gotthe way the horses is that officers would be designated. kissing --uld be for would be purchasing horses. the standard price, one price fits all. them andwill inspect buy them. a lot of corruption in that system because a lot of that was contracted out. pay off thewould contractor and the contractor would buy substandard horses. army formse union

the cavalry bureau with the intent of regulating the purchase system and requires that regular army officers be present and supervise the purchase of all horses. that pretty much fixes the problem. this is the standard for the horse. 15 hands, no less. about a thousand pounds. 950 was the minimum. more than four years old. than four years old, it is like a teenager. the campaign would make the horse lane. the horse has to be an adult. four years old and not more than 10 years old. the union army bought about 700,000 horses over the course of the war. captured or requisitioned from southern farmers who were in rebellion, about another 75,000.

so, close to 800,000 horses. cavalry force, it was troopers.00 me beforessomebody was asking the talk, what leads they -- what breeds they bought. there are a few small breeds that are beginning to start. organized breeding doesn't happen on a large scale and north america until the 20th century. as at types.ed indian, anything that was not mexican or not the third type

which was american. so, if you bought it from an american, it was an american type, if it was imported from mexico, it was a mexican type, and if you got it from native american or wild, or anywhere west of the missouri, it was considered an indian horse. the army didn't really care. do was to meet that basic criteria. they had to privately purchase them. they had to go through the horse heard and pick the one they like. that atd the army for the army price. these are what the cavalry did. most of this was pick it duty. basically regarding the army well nothing was happening. that was pretty routine.

famous and probably the most missed understood is a cavalry charge. the cavalry charge did not happen very often in the american civil war. it did not happen on a large scale and a lot of people believe this is primarily because of the rifle musket, the new infantry weapon. before the american civil war, infantry were armed with muskets with had a range of 100 yards. effectle musket had an of range of out to a thousand yards. so, extremely large need in infantry weapons technology. a lot of people assume that that was the reason the cavalry, you did not see a lot of cavalry charges because the infantry all of a sudden has this incredibly increased weapons capability. that is not true. the lack ofsons for

large-scale cavalry charges are training of the cavalry, which we already talked about. putting a thousand horsemen, much less two or 3000 into a mass formation and that is how the europeans did it. it required a lot of training, both individual training, horse training, and then group training. we do not have time to do that in the american civil war. a large force is gone in much of europe. the u.s., especially the eastern and southern u.s. still heavily enforced it. where you put a thousand forces to do a charge. so, the terrain drives away from the mass cavalry charges. the final thing is landownership. you have open terrain, then, like now, most of it is

privately owned small farmers and they fence their terrain, their land. so, where there is open terrain, unlike in europe or you have these vast estate essentially owned by the aristocracy and fences are not common, in the u.s., fences are everywhere and he cannot cavalry charge through fences. so, those reasons drive the american cavalry and the civil war away from the charge. you see lots of references to cavalry charges. generally, that is about eight guys wide and about a hundred guys deep at a full gallop down the road. they run into another group going in the opposite direction and you have this huge collision. not very graceful, not very controlled, and one group has more guys sitting on the horse at the end of the conclusion then the other group. yoully, the result is that

lose that unit. you launch them into a charge, whether unit is successful or fails, the unit is out of control and loss for the rest of the battle. charge, thessful troopers are scattered everywhere because of the level of horsemanship and command is not sufficient to keep the unit under control after a charge. you do see a lot of references to regiments, about three or 400 guys charging and almost always the countercharge, another fresh regiment on the other side charges back against him. the guys are decided, the horses are blown up, nobody is in charge. , nobody is in command because they lose track of the leadership and then the opponent come if he has a unit that has not been used, there is a countercharge. they happen in the american civil war but they are not decisive.

they are small operations. the primary and the most decisive way for the american cavalry, specially on the union deploy the cavalry dismounted. the union cavalry figures this out. the spencer carving is being issued on a large scale. the union cavalry are becoming trained. realize their advantage over the south is in their technology, specifically, these carbines. they are used very effectively in a dismounted role. there is also a tradition of fighting indians among the the indiansalry and are almost always fought by the cavalry on the frontier dismounted. we have a tradition before the war of fighting dismounted and then carries on through the war. when you add in the new technology, this becomes a very effective technique and arguably

the most decisive battle of the civil war is gettysburg. on the first day of gettysburg among the tone of the battle is set and it is set by the union seminaryighting on ridge and mcpherson's ridge, dismounted using their carbines. this is a very popular tactic, not always a very effective tactic and this was a tactic where large groups of cavalry would launch, because there was so much open space in the american civil war, it was possible with the speed of completelyride around and army. great publicity, good for row. army of itsthe cavalry capability for days or weeks while this is happening. looking back at the civil war, most historians and kind of

military experts believe that the cavalry raid, although it was practiced frequently was kind of a wasted tactic that most of the rates for unsuccessful, most of the rates, the cavalry could have been deployed better in another role. the most famous come out of the cavalry units. some of them, the army on the frontier, comes from the cavalry units. jeff stewart on the southern side is the most famous cavalry leader. one of the characteristics of all of these guys is they are relatively young. jeff stewart commands all of robert e lee's cap lori. he is 28 years old. he is a lieutenant in the regular army cavalry and decides to go south. he is killed in 1864 at yellow

tavern. arguably, that is the significant of the battle of yellow tavern which is the most capable of the seven cavalry leaders is lost to robert e lee. of course, some historians would say that was an emotional or psychological loss. in the south really needed their cavalry at gettysburg, stewart was leading a cavalry raid and was effectively out of the battle. so, maybe his loss was not as significant as the moral blow that it was to the south. phil sheridan, top left, becomes the cavalry corps commander opposing stewart, beginning in 1864. he is 35 years old.

or 30 years old. at the beginning of the civil war. did not really matter what branch you were. because almost all of these guys with the exception of nathan bedford forrest are west point graduates. west point was the only former military training. infantry, artillery, and cavalry officers and engineers. any west point or could walk into any one of those four kinds of units. , one of the most famous and one of the most capable, he is the guy that makes the decision to fight at gettysburg and holds up the arguably, you can same the one star generals of

the american civil war, he makes at gettysburg on the first day the greatest contribution. he dies from cholera. he had a bright military career. that is cut short by disease. the boy general. custer, 22 years old when the civil war starts. graduates from west point, goes right into command. is 26 end of the war he years old and a brigadier general. course, sheridan, a lieutenant general, he is 35, one of the things about the is that it is a young man's game. lastr leaders get promoted . sheridan goes from the tenant to lieutenant general in four years. custer goes from cadet at west

point to breeder general. general in four years. all of those go away. but the titles remain. once you are promoted, you keep the title. in 1876, at little bighorn, custer's actual army rank is lieutenant colonel. to lieutenantk colonel after the war. he keeps the title of general, but it is in honorary title. he is not even in command of the seventh cavalry. he is the deputy commander. sturgis -- i think that was in south dakota in the black hills? -- sturgis ises off doing other duties at the time of little bighorn and lieutenant colonel custer is in command of the regiment.

custer is an example of the boy generals who commanded a number of the brigades. custer commanded the michigan cavalry regiments and participated in all of the major cavalry battles in the east from 1860 to onward. and so, that is a little overview of the american cavalry and civil war. volumes of books have been written about the subject. this should give you a taste of kind of what the major characteristics of american cavalry were. i am happy to entertain any questions that you have. [applause] >> yes, sir. little bit away from

cavalry and i apologize in advance. you mentioned the tendency of officers from the south to defect from the confederacy was 50% and almost no enlisted personnel defected. that seems to be the case throughout the entire military. could you tell me why that is? why, if i am a sergeant from alabama and you are a lieutenant colonel from alabama, why is it that you defect and i stay? can you get into that a little bit? >> that's an interesting question and i have thought about it. let's see if i can make a short answer of it. when you are commission, probably 90% were commissioned out of west point. when you were appointed to west point, you were appointed from

your state. when you got your commission certificate, and in fact still to this day, they do this. it is a tradition. it has no meaning. in those days you're commissioning certificate said -- it still says the same things -- my commission certificate louis dimarco from the state of new jersey is commission to a lieutenant of the army of the united states. your state was the authority that sent you to west point and your commission from the federal government, you were commissioned as a representative of your state. a lot of army officers felt like, ok, i am a united states army officer representing the state of virginia. when virginia leaves the united states my oath to the united iates is not binding and so

resigned my commission, because the only reason i am in the army is i represent the state of virginia. that is how they rationalize it. there is a federal-state relationship before the american civil war. both in the reality and the perceptions of army officers was much different than it is today. >> yes. i am interested in stuart's career in a sense -- i have read a lot about the civil war. a brandy stationof before gettysburg led to the fairly useless arrayed and finally to yellow tavern, when they were actually outnumbered, i guess by the north. anyway, his audacity was obviously a benefit -- sort of like custer's, but ended up

being his downfall. that is probably a book right there. >> oh, there are several books. stuart is a character. i am not a stuart expert in the sense that they have a better trooper on average than the north. there is also undeniably a southern culture of combat or martial character, a military culture that is part of the elite class, the plantation class of the south, which makes them very aggressive in battle. put those factors together and you do not have a

really well-trained military unit in the southern cavalry, but you have a very aggressive military unit that has a training advantage over the north. on the northern side, the volunteer units do not have, in are cases, the commanders set because of wealth or political influence. sometimes they are elected, but militaryno particular skill. stewart in his career kind of represents the advantage the south thousand to about 1863. i 1863, especially at the senior levels, the north starts to eliminate incompetent, nonaggressive cavalry commanders and the northern troopers are beginning to learn how to ride .nd fight mounted

and northern cavalry leaders are beginning to learn how to compensate for weaknesses in their cavalry unit. career as astuart's rising star until 1863. that kind of plateaus. beingreally probably whipsed by the union -- by the union cavalry leaders like sherman in 1864. have the war gone on, his reputation would have suffered inh the rest of the south 1865. >> you describe stewart as the stuart as the south's cavalry commander.

why would you put him over bedford forrest? jim sheridan fit in? >> i would not rate him over bedford forrest. he makes his name early. --is there when all of the 1861 to 1863, the southern victories. he is in the eastern theater, arguably the most important theater. he is commanding bthe -- definitely the most powerful and important of these southern cavalry forces. for all those reasons, he gets a prominent spot. most historians think that bedford forrest is a better taxes,man in terms of -- tactics, strategy,

then stuart. even when he gives division command, by then these southern divisions are so depleted it is really a small command and he is never in the position to make a on the war.act therefore in terms of importance to the war effort, i would rate stuart higher. -- i thinkar jefferson davis made similar wasents -- bedford forrest the one commanders he should've made more effective use of, because he was very talented, but he was never put in a position to shine like stuart was. sheridan i would rate as competent.

's big characteristic is using credibly aggressive. he commands infantry for most of the war. he makes a change when he takes over the union cavalry because he transfers that -- they are becoming much better experienced. when they get married up with sheridan, they then add this ingredient of aggressive leadership which they have been lacking for much of the war. rateo, i would not sheridan tactically -- i would probably rate bedford forrest better than sheridan. stuart and sheridan, very similar. sheridan though, he is not a cavalryman. he is an infantryman. he is a great leader of men and that is his big contribution. >> if you had to make the choice, which one would be your cavalry leader? forrest.d pick bedford >> thank you. >> star? >> --

>> sir? >> [indiscernible] it does not include freight wagons. i don't think it includes artillery ee there are. it was done differently. they were purchased separately. sure, because for all logistics, wagons support that the army used through, until the beginning of the 20th century is contract. so, they would contract with teamsters to provide wagons support for the army and wagoneer's were generally civilian contractors. owned wagonse army in the army. those start to come about during eriod, but are

really not a standing force until the 20th century. >> thank you. >> sir? >> this is a question about the ending years of the cavalry, if i may. my father was stationed at fort and 40's. lots's you know,cle patrols, training patrols, for reconnaissance, i suppose and messengers. would you discuss the transition from four/two mechanical -- horseflesh to mechanical? before the ward and he missed the philippines. apparently they ate their horses on the way to baton. he would have been in that.

is theer thing motorcycle element at fort riley, there is a bit of americana there. i have never been able to trace this. the word is, there are a lot of guys, motorcycle cavalry at the end of world war ii, they ended up hitting california, and there that runen rumors across that they formed a club called the hells angels there. is that a myth? >> there is a little bit of truth in everything. that mechanization transition is another volume of books, but to address the motorcycle issue very quickly -- when they realized that automotive power was going to replace horse power, kind of the default assumption would be it would be the motorcycle. one rider, the size of the horse . physically look like the natural

placement system. so, in the early experiments, they thought about, that that would be the natural transition. but what they found very quickly veryotorcycles were difficult to maintain. -- a lot ofund that injuries. because the type of work that motorcycles cows were doing cross-country is like motocross type riding. it takes a lot of training. lots of broken bones. lots of broken motorcycles. when you are on the motorcycle, you could not do anything. all of your attention was focused on the motorcycle, much more so than a horse. once you learn to ride, riding is like driving a car or even flying an airplane. once you learn the skill and master it, the muscle memory can do 90% of what you need to do

and you can focus on other things. ,ross-country motorcycle riding not quite that transferable. what they found though, what did work automatically -- automotive lee was the jeep. three or four guys sit in it. easy.ibly very low maintenance overhead. on the jeep.cused the other three guys can do other tasks. you have to remember, the cavalry's view was the course -- means to a task. whether it was a jeep or a motorcycle or a horse, you have to do your military duties. the motorcycle was too intense to operate and do your military stuff. with the jeep, one guy could drive the jeep and the other guys could do a whole bunch of other stuff. the jeep into being the

replacement for the horse, not the motorcycle. we begin that process in 1940 and by the end of world war ii, the decision has been made and in europe, what most people do not realize -- we deployed over 20 cavalry regiments to europe in the european theater. they were all what we called at the time mechanized cavalry, but primarily jeeps. and they did scouting and stuff for the armies in europe. most of the regular army, cavalry regiments, went to europe. the only ones who did not worthy regiments of the first cavalry division. so -- >> i have a multipart question. i think they relate together. first of all, i have the impression that after the civil war until at least the spanish-american war, most of military was actually cavalry. i would like to know if i am correct on that. and then, i would like to know how the training continued.

i have always heard comments it was like the plains indian. did it ultimately match the plains indian, or was it our technical -- technological advantage? >> good questions. at the end of the civil war, the army downsizes massively, likely due. we go from a million man union army to 25,000. about 31 regiments, of which 10 were cavalry. six regular regiments at the beginning of the civil war. they knew the focus would be the plains after the war, so when they reorganized the army, congress authorized for additional-- 4 regiments. former slaves became the buffalo soldier regiments.

you had 21,000 troopers, 21,000 roughly soldiers in the army. thethink about one third of army would be cavalry, but it is not the case. the cavalry regiments were kept forward most of the duration of to 100%l war as close strength as they could. so, about half of the army's actual troop strength was in those 10 cavalry regiments and the other half was spread out amongst 20 and country regiments and they just kind of understood that we were not going to have full strength units. even in the cavalry regiments, 1000 men were authorized. at any point in time you might have 800 assigned to a unit. you might have 100 to 200, 6, disabled, on the other -- sick, disabled, other duties. when

custer takes the centennial campaign, he has about -- a little over 600 or so. which is still a significant size organization. esther was not even the commander. the commander was absent because in those days, -- custer was not even the commander. the commander was absent because in those days, there was no authorizations for schools like recruiters or any of that stuff. so, when you want to set up a recruiting station in new york, you take troops out of the regiments on the frontier and send them to work in new york and those become anti-slots. there is no -- what we call today the institutional army versus the field army. in those days it was one army, the st. paul. everyone is assigned to a regiment. everything the army did came out of that pool of guys. >> how about the comparison with the indians?

the indians -- the average indian braves had five to seven horses. the cavalry trooper had one. when the indians went on a raid, they had a pony string with them. when they were pursued by the cavalry, they could switch courses every two hours. with five or so horses, they were a lot faster than the cavalry. be cavalry on the other hand were very disciplined. because everyone is a civil war veteran. unlike in the civil war where they were very untrained, frontier cavalry are very professional. and they -- they were not as fast or agile as the native americans, but they were smarter. and they were more organized. the native americans, there were hundreds of tribes. there was just one u.s. cavalry. they could coordinate and they did very well, using the telegraph, using railroads. they were professional military fighting against tribes. and sheridan was the commander

for most of the time and he was a smart guy. he used their professional if abilities to overcome some of the natural warrior capabilities of the native americans. >> thanks. >> sir? last question. with, my granddad was custer, and from what i understand on the troops, there was a lot of desertion. so, you really had a recruit problem all of the time. during the indian wars, there were good southern boys that would go out west where the indians were and they did not care much about what they were doing neither. they just left. is true. >> i was going to say when i was laste army in 65, the ft probably.

horse isast buried on the parade field there at fort riley. >> i had on: the sixth cavalry who got slaughtered by -- an uncle in the sixth cavalry who got slaughtered by stuart's boys. >> there was a lot of cavalry per dissipation in that campaign. i will say one last thing about the desertion point. about a third of the army deserted every year. you would need 7000 recruits to replace them. that was a training challenge. the in ceo's and the officers that were very professional and they had a pretty decent training system. the american cavalry at the trooper level was never great, but during the indian wars, they were competent. and the leadership was very good. they were never an individual match for the indians, but as an

organization, they were pretty effective. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook. all weekend long, american history tv is joining our charter cable partners to showcase the history of st. louis, missouri. to learn more about the cities on our 2014 chore, visit www.c-span.org/localcontent. at st.any with our look louis. this is american history tv on c-span3. about st.u think louis and beer, of course you're going to think about

anheuser-busch, but that is not the first name you should think of. you should think of adam lemp. this new style of beer. a lighter beer. not the dark ale the british brought. the germans really lived on this notion of bringing it to the city of st. louis. and they loved it. very quickly he became this father of lager beer and and reduce a new wave of culture, really, in the city. realized, youlemp know, he had a market on this new beer and started employing a number of people. build up a plant. it is a pretty extensive plants. another thing you learned to do, ideaslowed the latest about pasteurization, about refrigeration. these things are

coming into play, he is implementing them into his plant that allows them to continue to be in the forefront of everyone else brewing beer in st. louis. he just made his fortune by being smart. as the turn of the 20th century begins, there is rumblings from the temperance women. people who are beginning to see that saloons and breweries are really not a good idea for the for the culture in general. we find that america had an owl called problem. they were really drinking way too much. concernedmen were about this. the temperance movement begins. the breweries see something is in the works of a prohibition amendment. the talk is out there. many breweries decide they are not going to fight it. adam's son, william, by the evoke role of vision decides we

are not even going to fight this. they closed their doors. they have made enough money for everyone in the family. they will be fine. they sell off their logo for falstaff beer. they close their doors. they do not even try to fight the prohibition movement. they are done. really we do not see the name as a brewery after 1920. the first part of the anheuser-busch legacy is everhart anheuser. he founded his first brewery in the 1850's. small,hased the struggling brewery. he brings on adolphus busch. they introduce but wiser in 1876. really at that time -- at that point, anheuser-busch does not look back. they have a huge, growing every year, growing output of barrels of beer per year, and it is not

1890's that they take emp's brewery, but once they do, they become second in the running to anheuser-busch. they have a smart way of handling this notion of prohibition. they decide they will lay by the law. they are not going to fight that. that is not a smart thing to do, of course. they have this huge plan already active. in the years prior to prohibition -- they kind of saw it coming. they decided they would start this product that was a malt beverage. and they said, we're going to test this out. we will test it and test it until we get it right. a product they entered prohibition with. they continued to make budweiser, oddly, because they made it under the limit that was legal.

it was almost no alcohol, but they made it. so they could keep the name budweiser out there. that is perfect if you wanted to be her name and marketing and strategies in place. they are the companies -- the company that comes out on the other end, ready to make beer on repeal day. it is interesting to think what it might have been like, but it is hard to take that away from st. louis. st. louis seems like it would be a very small community that may be never grew up to be the fourth largest city in 1904 and maybe would not have been the home of the world's fair. i think all of those things build on each other. we have to thank those immigrants to came very early to make st. louis what it is today. >> another one was gruesome, but it was an international sensation. it was called the trump murder. it was in 1885.

there were two englishmen who came to america. they were traveling salesman. they meet on the boat. they decide to go across america. they wind up in a nice hotel in st. louis called the southern. .ne was richer than the other the poor guy suddenly has a lot of money flashing around and he tells everybody that his eddie went out of town. and the hotel room start smelling. and the chambermaids go in and it winds up that his buddy is in the trunk several days. the police try to start chasing him, but he has taken the ship from san francisco already. as becomes a big international case because you have the two guys from england, st. louis, you have the manhunt to the other end of the world. and the new zealand police stopped them. two officers from st. louis actually went to get him. took 10 weeks for the round-trip. when they come back to the train

station, half of st. louis is there to see this guy. interviews galore. .e winds up being hanged we used to have a gallows that the police headquarters, like a lot of towns did. >> we look at the history and literary life of st. louis, missouri throughout the weekend on c-span's booktv and american history tv on c-span a3.ir on -- on c-span3. >> next american history tv, a panel including dennis hastert, bob woodward, and two former congressman. they discussed the role of the legislative branch when the nation is faced by international crises. it includes the separation of powers and actions taken without